Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NaNoWriMo update

Thanks! He's still hunting and pecking on the keyboard, and today it took us about 20 or more minutes just to physically write two full sentences. If you ask him to spell a word verbally, he does pretty well (still not cosnsitent with his decoding/reading skills, but ok.) Also, handwriting is his weakest area, so it takes him a long time to get anything on paper. He'd forget his thought before he had the first word on paper if he had to write it himself. Basically, it would never happen. His perfectionistic tendencies kick in, and he erases each letter at least once before it's "good enough." I tell him the letters are great, but they have to be perfect in order for him to accept them. But, that's another topic. ; )

I think it would be nearly as bad if he was typing, but I'm not sure. We'll try that tomorrow. When he dictated the story to me today, we got 350 words down in about 15 minutes. It's a cute story so far.

Thanks a bunch!

The final day is here!! Congrats to all those who participated! Who made their goal? I did YAY!!!

Well done Shari

Yay!

Congrats on everyone who did this.

I would like to hear more about experiences. How did you ask the kids to do this? What made it interesting for them?

We did not do this because some other things came up. I would like to try it in the future. I'm not sure what it's all about. I need to go back to the website and investigate.

Well, I bombed out, myself--I only made it to almost 6000 words, LOL! But it's a lot more of my story than I would have had otherwise, and I'm still working on it a little at a time. I think I will try Script Frenzy in April--I've had a script idea for a while now and would like to try it. Must read up on how to write scripts now.

On the other hand, DS7 reached his goal of 1250 words--he didn't get to work on it much after we started late, so we changed his original goal of 3000 words and he ended up with 1500 and some. It's not so much a story as a stream of consciousness. He wrote the first 800 or so on his typewriter and I typed it on the computer for him, and then he wrote some on the computer himself, and then he wrote longhand and then typed some, and then he finished it on the computer. So it's a book of many styles, at least!

Wolf(5) finished his with 1000+ words and illustrated it! I clocked in at 50052 or something like that so I won too! Not only that but I actually FINISHED the story!!!

He really didn't have a choice, honestly. I told him it what it was and that it would count as school. He had no complaints, in fact he was totally into it and begging to work on it.

Yay! Wyldcat!! Congrats to Wolf too!! My DS6 finished his story at 826 words. His goal was 1000. No amount of conning could convince him to embellish (read stubborn!)but I was still really proud of the effort he put in and his perserverence.

Yay he finished his story!!! If it is done it is done.

After reading here about NaNoWriMo last year, I wrote it on my 2010 calendar to remind me to try it out. I thought I'd revive this thread and ask if anyone around here planning to participate this year.

Both my DSs have told me that they'd like to be authors/illustrators. I'm thinking of having us all participate, but I do worry about how many hours there are (or aren't) in a day. It sounds like NaNoWriMo could be a lot of fun, and would probably be good for all the perfectionists in our family -- not that we have any of those around here.

Also, has anyone read Chris Baty's book, "No Plot, No Problem"? I wonder if it is worth buying before November.

Trying to get up the nerve!